In the early morning sun, Beijing woke up.

The streets gradually became more crowded with pedestrians, cars and horses. And one of the most distinctive things is the number of bicycles!

Horse-drawn carriages are not cheap, and ordinary petty bureaucrats cannot afford to buy their own carriages, and if they have them, they need to have special drivers. This kind of consumption is beyond the reach of some middle-level officials.

Beijing was the first city in the northern region to implement a public carriage, but for the officials in the entire city of Beijing, the public carriage was not only time-consuming [public public, this carriage could not run randomly at his will], but also somewhat lost its identity [there are three religions and nine streams in the carriage]. In this way, the bicycle vigorously advocated by Liu Xian naturally entered the eyes of many low-level, grass-roots and some middle-level officials.

Bicycles are convenient, fast, and inexpensive, at least for officials, and the price is not a problem.

Therefore, the army of bicycles, which once represented China in the original time and space, quietly raised its head in Beijing. By the end of the year, according to statistics, Beijing car dealers had sold as many as 5,000 bicycles. A significant number of them are collateral-triggered purchases!

For today's young people, owning a bicycle is a very attractive thing. Something always sets the tide at the beginning of its rise. Plus rickshaws. These four modes of transportation have become the mainstream of urban transportation.

The sedan chair is almost extinct in Beijing.

It's half past seven, and it's rush hour for work. Government officials rushed to their offices in droves, like sardines. Too many horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, rickshaws, etc. are all in one place, making some sections of the road seem very busy.

An inconspicuous carriage drove unhurriedly, and it was not a private carriage. Look at the small red flag on the front of the carriage, you can know that this is a bus. Look at the license plate on the back. The number within 100 is at least known to an official. This is the frame of a bigwig at the ministerial level.

There is indeed a minister on the carriage, Yan Jingming, the chief minister of finance, a standard former Qing minister, a native of Chaoyi County, Shaanxi Province (now Dali County), who is famous all over the world for his 'financial management', and has long been known as the "prime minister of saving time".

Of course, this person also has the unjust case of Shandong Huangyazhai that makes people gnash their teeth.

But for the extremely important position of Minister of Finance, Liu Xian still named his general.

As for finance, Liu Xian didn't know anything about it. What he can do is to choose a good person to be in charge of the Ministry of Finance, and let him know more about the formal finance that has been developed in the West.

There was another man in the carriage. Lu Lun, the general manager of Huaxia Bank, and the two rushed to see Liu Xian.

The Japanese Civil War had broken out. In recent years, although the relations between China and Japan have reached a freezing point on the surface, the bilateral economic and trade exchanges have been much closer than before the war that broke Japan. As of the second year of the new Qin, that is, at the end of last year, the import and export volume of Sino-Japanese trade was 46 times higher than that of the ten years of Tongzhi!

How small was the trade volume between China and Japan in the pre-Qing Dynasty? There are no 10 merchant ships from China to Japan a year. And it's all old-fashioned sailboats.

And what about after the end of the war? Under the control of the Qin army, a large number of cloth, salt and sugar, medicinal herbs, grain, daily necessities, etc., entered Japan from Nagasaki and the Southwest Domain. Among them, the daily necessities and cloth have a certain amount of influence on the trade with Japan of the United States and Britain.

Of course, the Qin army also began to import copper bars and high-quality sulfur from Japan on a large scale. But the import and export volume on both sides. Sincerely, it's very asymmetrical.

The Japanese Government was anxious to see that the inflow of cloth and other industrial products from the Qin Army into Japan had brought great pressure and influence to Japan's civilian light industry, which had just begun to develop. However, the Tokyo government did not dare to strongly prohibit trade, and could only use means to create its own obstacles to the sale, sale, and circulation of Chinese goods.

And that's the end result. Chinese merchant ships completely abandoned Nagasaki and docked in Kagoshima Prefecture instead. A large number of Chinese goods were bought and sold by the Southwest Domain, which led to the flourishing of Japanese smuggling. The Southwest Domain has not earned a lot of profits.

At least the Southwest Domain bought rice from the Qin army and sold it into its own territory. That's more than three times the profit.

In the last two or three years, tens of thousands of samurai have gathered in Kagoshima Prefecture. Many people also brought their own family members with them. However, in the entire prefecture of Kagoshima, the territory of the former Satsuma Domain, there was not a single occurrence of Misao. It seems that the Satsuma Domain did not increase the number of tens of thousands of samurai and dependents, but the population was greatly reduced.

The whole of Japan is short of food.

The Tokyo government exploited the peasants too much, and trade between the two sides seemed to have been cut off in the wake of the civil war. This made Lu Lun see a glimmer of opportunity.

As the steward of the Hanzhong farm system back then, Lu Lun was able to keep up step by step with the expansion of the Qin army's power, instead of falling behind. After the establishment of Huaxia Bank, he also hired a number of economic experts from Europe and the United States as consultants on banking policies. Now he can see the opportunity to hit the Japanese economy from the point of the Japanese Civil War, and this is his growth.

There are many military police patrolling the streets. The atmosphere was a bit solemn to deter Xiaoxiao. This phenomenon will not disappear in Beijing in a year or two. It is precisely for this reason that Yan Jingming and Lu Lun did not bring guards when they traveled, but the driver who drove the car and the secretary sitting opposite Yan Lu were all carrying pistols, which was not a lot of security measures.

The distance from the Ministry of Finance to the ZN Sea was not very far, and it didn't take long for the two of them to rush to Liu Xian's residence. Liu Xian was busy until the middle of the night last night, just got up, and is now having breakfast.

"How's your paperwork going? Waging an economic war against Tokyo can be regarded as the first shot in our foreign finance. To play out the level! ”

Liu Xian received a joint letter from Yan Jingming and Lu Lun three days ago. Today is the time for coarse cloth verification. These two men were ready to use five million taels of silver and some gold to attack the Japanese monetary system.

"Your Majesty, this is a minister's recital." Yan Jingming took out a fold from his sleeve and handed it to Liu Xian. It is written about what they believe is the flaw of the Japanese monetary system, where they can take advantage of it, and how to deal with it.

Liu Xian looked at the terms on the note word by word, he recognized every word, but when he was connected together, he couldn't understand what to say, his brain hurt for a while, and he really couldn't understand it.

"Japan's finances have been struggling to make ends meet since the Meiji Restoration, and the situation is grim. I know that. Since the tenth year of Tongzhi, Japan has reformed its currency and issued a large number of paper money, yen and public bonds, and I also know it. But is it true that the financial constraints of the Tokyo government have reached the point where a few million taels of silver can form an impact? ”

"Your Majesty, the Japanese government has no real money in its hands. False currency, they increased too high. ”

Liu Xian is not an all-rounder, and he never shows his 'omnipotence' in front of his subordinates. Yan Jingming and Lu Lun were fully prepared for the questions that Liu Xian might raise. Now Liu Xian's problem is within the consideration of the two of them in advance.

Lu Lun stepped forward and said, "Ten years ago, before the yen was issued, Shigenobu Okuma took over the post of deputy governor of Yuri's accountant and began to take charge of the finances, that is, the policy of 'exchange of paper money for huàn'.

Okuma's banknote policy was to convert the banknotes of the Taisei, which could not be exchanged for gold and silver for huàn in the early Meiji period, into convertible huàn banknotes, and to pay interest at 5% per month for those who could not exchange huàn. The upper limit of the issuance amount was 32.5 million taels, and the actual amount reached 45 million taels. Just like the banknotes of the Taizheng officials, three million silver and gold, issued 30 million taels of banknotes, and finally inflated to 48 million taels.

Okuma banknotes are equivalent to the original gold and silver coins, and the price of banknotes is prohibited from floating with the market. However, at that time, the currency of Japan, in addition to the main currency and the banknotes of the Taisei officials, also occupied an important position in the currency of each domain. The state is chaotic and can't be sorted out at all.

When the yen was established, Okuma was preparing to implement the silver standard, but after Ito Hirobumi and others returned home from an examination of the U.S. fiscal and monetary system, they strongly advocated the adoption of the gold standard. The Meiji government then promulgated the National Bank Ordinance, which was intended to follow the example of the U.S. banking system and issue convertible huàn bank notes in order to recover non-banknotes and regulate the capital market. However, the price of gold and silver in Japan did not match the world's gold and silver prices, and the introduction of the gold standard led to a large outflow of gold and silver.

After Inoue took office, in the process of reorganizing the old feudal currency and old feudal debts, she repaid the old feudal debts of nearly 80 million yen initially recognized by the Tokyo government with only 4 million yen in cash, and then repaid about 13 million yen of new debts in installments with interest, and repaid more than 11 million yen of old debts for 50 years without interest, and forcibly abolished the other 50 million yen.

If Japan's political situation is stable, Inoue may not be able to complete real fiscal austerity. However, the emperor's battle to break the sun that year shook Dongying, the authority of the Tokyo government plummeted, and the disputes between the feudal domains resumed. In addition, the Southwest Domain was prominent at the right time, and Inoue Xin was resigned to work for other purposes after less than two years in office.

After the war, Japan's finances were infiltrated by Britain, France, and the United States, although it still maintained a certain degree of independence, and completed the transition to the gold standard. But private inflation has not slowed down much.

Yangyi supported Japan, and the most he took was weapons, and the money was used as a military expense for Japan. It does not benefit the people much. After Okuma's second ascension, he promulgated the "Ordinance for the Issuance of Kinroku Bond Certificates" and issued a total of 20,000,000 yen of public bonds. Although it alleviated the Japanese government's finances, it led to a large outflow of positive currency and even more severe inflation among the people.

Since last year, the Tokyo government has continuously issued a large amount of currency, which has led to even more hyperinflation among the people. Although the paper money policy skillfully transferred the wealth of the Japanese people to the Tokyo government, it ensured the development of the Japanese Restoration. However, the hyperinflation caused by the excessive issuance of paper money by the Tokyo government caused most of the government-run enterprises run by the Japanese government to lose money, and private capital was not well developed and utilized because of the imperfect financial system, the imperfect investment conditions, and the seizure of the market by our goods.

Japan's economy is already in trouble.

As far as we can see, Japan's gold and silver reserves are less than 10 million yen, and the reserve ratio is only 5%. (To be continued......)